


The Doctor's Son: Book II

by littledragon94



Series: The Doctor's Son Trilogy [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Minor Violence, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1766299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledragon94/pseuds/littledragon94
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Book II of The Doctor's Son Trilogy. It's been eight months since Dorian said farewell to his father, and the world has moved on. Humanity knows that they are not alone in the universe. With increased alien activity across the world and reports of insects disappearing, it seems that Dorian is being kept quite busy enough on Earth without him jetsetting off through time and space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doctor's Son: Book II

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the great response the first book of this trilogy (yes, it will be a trilogy, eventually) on both AO3 and FF.Net.   
> I hope you all enjoy what's in store in Book II, though bear with me as it will take a looooong time before I get it finished, given my track record with being distracted and starting another load of fics in between chapters.
> 
> The usual shout-out goes to thestairwell for being the best beta ever: reading through my stuff, nagging me to finish fics, and sighing with exasperation every time I start another fic before finishing my on-going ones.

It had been eight months since the army of ghosts and the Battle of Canary Wharf. Eight months since Dorian Smith had last seen his father, declining an offer of travelling with him through time and space.

And in those eight months the world had changed.

International governments had tried covering things up by dismissing events as hoaxes; but the truth was still out there - hidden in plain sight: the spaceship crashing into Big Ben, the Christmas invasion, Canary Wharf; it all led to one conclusion.

Planet Earth was not alone in the universe.

 

In light of this realisation, Dorian’s work at UNIT had increased dramatically. Most calls he received were dead-ends - people claiming to have seen aliens in their gardens, but finding that it was the shadow of their neighbour’s compost heap - that sort of thing.

But every once in awhile he got a legitimate case: a Weevil infestation in Brighton, abductions in Liverpool, rogue Graske in Southampton, and most recently, crop-circles in Leadworth.

He was just returning from that investigation into the rather specific “doctor” that had been carved out in a cornfield when he got a call from his boss, Kate Stewart, at UNIT.

‘Hi Kate,’ Dorian activated the handsfree device on his mobile, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove.

‘We’ve got another job for you, Smith,’ she informed him. ‘The Royal Hope Hospital has just vanished.’

Dorian braked hard, earning himself a horn-blast from the car behind. ‘It’s what?’

‘Vanished, yes. Uprooted actually. There’s only a crater remaining.’

‘What happened?’

‘That’s what we want you to find out. How far out of London are you?’

‘About two hours - I can make it one if I have to.’

‘There’s a helicopter on its way to you.’

‘Can’t you or Malcolm take this one?’ Dorian asked, resuming driving.

‘Malcolm’s still on the North Sea expedition and I’m about to go into a meeting with Mr Saxon. There is a containment team en route to close off the area, but we will need you there as soon as possible to take charge and liaise with the other services on scene.’

‘Right-oh,’ Dorian said. ‘Send me a location and I’ll meet the chopper there.’

Kate hung up, assuring him that he would receive a text momentarily containing the designated meeting-point.

Dorian blew out his cheeks. Loose aliens and crop-circles were one thing, but vanishing hospitals were something else entirely. He put his foot down on the accelerator and sped off to meet the helicopter.

***

Dorian arrived at the hospital site to find a crater, just as Kate had told him, in place of the fifteen floors of the Royal Hope.

Already at the scene were a few faces that Dorian had become very familiar with over the past year since he had rejoined UNIT as one of their science officers. Both Mike Kopp and Michael Jones were there, their equipment all set up to scan for unusual readings around the crater. A platoon of UNIT troops supplemented the police force in cordoning off the area and deterring members of the public trying to get a closer look at what had happened.

Colonel Mace was in command at the scene.

‘About time Smith!’ the Colonel barked when Dorian reported to him. ‘I want your team on high alert for any changes in readings around this area. We’ve got reports of unusual electrical activity prior to the hospital’s disappearance, and eyewitness reports that the localised precipitation of the area was going up. I want an explanation.’

‘The rain was going up, sir?’ Dorian wasn’t sure he had understood the straight-backed Colonel.

‘That’s what I said, Commander.’

‘I’ll get right to it, sir,’ Dorian announced, going to check whether Kopp or Jones had found anything yet.

‘We’ve got definite readings of an electrical field about the place, sir,’ Kopp reported, showing Dorian the evidence on screen. ‘From the reports so far we’ve gathered that there was a storm surrounding the hospital just before it vanished, but this electricity registers at a much higher voltage than your typical thunderstorm.’

‘So the hospital hasn’t just vanished,’ Dorian surmised, ‘you think it was transported?’

Kopp nodded. ‘And whatever did the transporting must have required a huge amount of energy; there had to be about a thousand people at least in that hospital.’

Dorian struggled to think what anyone would want with the hospital. ‘This hospital is no different to any other, why would whatever did this choose to make it disappear?’

‘It could have been something in the hospital sir,’ Jones added, listening to the conversation.

Dorian looked across the crater site to the rest of the city beyond. He caught a glimpse of a particular blue box hidden behind some trees in the distance.

‘Or someone.’ He wondered what the Doctor was doing at the hospital, and what trouble he had gotten himself into because of it. ‘Keep me posted, I’m going to take a look around.’

Dorian loosened his tie. He was dressed in civilian clothes for once, having only planned to travel from Leadworth to London that day. He had barely made it to the first police riot van on the corner of the hospital site when he heard someone calling his name.

He turned towards the sound, surprised to find it coming from the gathering of civilians outside the police cordon.

‘Dorian!’

He spotted the caller and made his way over to her. It was Tish Jones, sister of Dorian’s ex-girlfriend, Martha Jones. ‘Tish, what are you doing here?’

‘Martha’s in the hospital! I was on the phone to her right before it vanished!’ Tish cried hysterically. ‘I was going to see her for lunch!’

‘Woah Tish,’ Dorian squeezed onto the other side of the cordon. ‘How about we go over here and you tell me everything that happened, yeah?’ He led her away from the crowd to a bench. ‘Start from the beginning.’

‘Well I’d just got out of work so I rang Martha about Leo’s party tonight - it’s his 21st - and Dad’s causing trouble because he wants to bring Annelies,’ Tish explained quickly. Dorian listened attentively, nodding encouragingly when she wavered, trying to find anything unusual in Tish’s tale. ‘...and I said to Martha, it was like in a cartoon, you know when there’s a guy and he’s got a cloud over his head? It was like that, but over the hospital. And the rain was going up. You believe me right? You don’t think I’m crazy saying this?’

‘Not at all,’ Dorian reassured her, ‘I’m just trying to work out why the hospital was the target.’

‘Do you think Martha’s okay?’ Tish asked, her worry clear in the lines of her forehead.

Dorian patted her hand comfortingly and smiled. ‘If anyone’s going to be okay, it’s Martha.’

Tish looked away, trying to hide the wetness of her eyes. ‘I know that, it’s just-’

‘Sshh, it’s going to be okay,’ Dorian wrapped Tish in a much needed hug, and soon her breathing slowed and she broke free of the hug, wiping her eyes.

‘So what are you doing here?’ she sniffled, waving her hand to indicate the general area around them.

‘Working,’ he explained vaguely. ‘I’ve got a job as a science advisor with a private firm.’

‘Fancy,’ she said with a small smile. ‘Is that what you left Martha for?’

There it was. Dorian had been wondering how long it would be until Tish brought up his and Martha’s relationship. ‘Tish...’

‘I’m not prying,’ she assured him. ‘Well I guess I am. I just don’t understand why you left her. I can understand leaving medicine; I wouldn’t even want to get into it in the first place. But you and Martha were good - you’d been together for ages.’

Dorian opened and closed his mouth, wondering how he could possibly explain things to Tish. He was saved the trouble of replying by his radio crackling, calling him back to Colonel Mace.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he told Tish, jogging away before she could probe him any more.

***

‘What have we got?’ Dorian asked, joining the Colonel beside Kopp and Jones’ computers.

‘Increased energy spikes all around the area, sir,’ Jones explained. ‘They started about a minute ago and are getting stronger.’

‘Any cause that we can see yet?’

‘No sir.’

‘Well, Smith?’ Mace addressed Dorian. ‘What do you make of these readings?’

Dorian scratched at the back of his neck. ‘At a push, sir? I’d say get everyone back, away from the site.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it looks like the hospital is coming back.’ At his words, the very air around them felt like static, and the ground shook. Where before there had been a crater, there now stood the Royal Hope Hospital, looking as though it had been there all along.

Mace seized his radio but found that it had stopped working, as had Kopp and Jones’ equipment.

‘It’s all fried, sir!’ Kopp exclaimed, tearing open the scanner casings to release the steam and smoke pouring from inside. ‘It must have been the electrical field.’

Mace stormed away from them and called one of the Privates over, Dorian followed after him. ‘I want all civilians kept back - only allow the emergency services through until the area is clear.’

Dorian kept pace with the Colonel while he stalked off to try and find a working communications device.

‘Sir, permission to go into the hospital?’

‘Not until the emergency services say it’s safe.’

Dorian stepped out of the way while a group of ambulance men hurried towards the hospital, followed by a swarm of firemen. By the time they had passed, Mace had gone; he had probably found one of the jeep radios to use. Dorian turned back to the hospital, where the first few patients and doctors from inside were being escorted out with oxygen masks and tanks. Dorian headed over to see what he could do to help.

‘Smith!’ someone croaked behind him as he spoke to a paramedic about where to send the more serious patients while they cleared the hospital. Dorian found Oliver Morgenstern, one of the med students Dorian had worked with last year, breathing through an oxygen mask in the back of an ambulance.

‘Oliver, what happened?’ Dorian asked, leaning on the step of the ambulance.

‘It was aliens,’ Morgenstern told him, his eyes wide. ‘They took us to the moon and they looked like rhinos.’

‘Alien rhinos on the moon?’ Dorian repeated. ‘Seriously?’

Morgenstern nodded, he looked tired but deadly serious. ‘Look what they did to me!’ He held up his right hand. It had a large black cross on the back.

Dorian didn’t know what it meant. ‘What is it?’

‘They catalogued me!’ he cried, taking another sucking breath of oxygen from the tank. ‘They shone this light in my eyes to check I was human, and then they catalogued me.’

Dorian moved out of the way as a paramedic brought in another oxygen-starved person. ‘I’ve got to go Oliver, but you take care okay?’

The young doctor protested as Dorian walked away, slipping through the wide open doors of the hospital, looking around at the walls he had known so well. He walked down the main corridor, diving out of sight halfway down when he spotted none other than Martha Jones walking towards him, supporting an elderly patient on her way out while looking as though she was about to pass out herself.

Dorian waited until she had walked out before resuming his search through the hospital.

‘Fancy seeing you here!’ a bright voice cheered from a side-corridor. Dorian found the Doctor standing bare-footed in the doorway of the radiology department, his hands in the pockets of his TARDIS-blue suit.

‘Well I did used to work here,’ Dorian smiled.

The Doctor grinned at him for a moment before pulling him into a tight hug. ‘Good to see you, Dorian.’

Dorian couldn’t explain how much those five words meant to him. They made his chest want to explode with joy. ‘And you, Doctor.’

The Doctor released him and took a good look at Dorian’s face. ‘Yep, still haven’t aged.’

‘You can talk,’ Dorian retorted. ‘Care to explain what happened here?’

The Doctor put his hands back into his pockets. ‘Judoon, these intergalactic police-slash-thugs, were hunting for a Plasmovore called Florence.’

‘Florence?’ Not a very alien name, Dorian thought.

‘Yup, Florence Finnegan. They transported the hospital to the neutral territory of the moon so they could search for and kill her.’

‘And did they?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor nodded. ‘But only after she drank some of my blood and nearly wiped out half the Earth with an MRI scanner.’

Dorian gaped. ‘Drank your-?’

‘Blood, yes. Plasmovores are internal shape-changers see? She had already appeared human once when they scanned her, so I tricked her into drinking some of mine so that she would appear non-human the next time they scanned her.’ The Doctor seemed rather pleased with how his plan had worked out.

‘And you lost your shoes when?’ Dorian pointed.

‘Ah, that’s another story. Using X-rays to stop a Slab - Florence’s leathery bodyguards.’ The Doctor wiggled his toes. Dorian decided not to ask for more details about it.

‘So if the Judoon weren’t looking for you, why were you here?’

‘I picked up the plasma coils around the hospital and thought I’d take a look.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘It turns out it wasn’t the hospital itself causing the plasma coils, but the Judoon. Shall we walk out? I’d like a look in the little shop.’

Dorian followed his father down the corridor. ‘What have you been up to since...’ he didn’t need to explain what he meant: since Rose.

‘This and that,’ The Doctor replied enigmatically. ‘Saved a bride from a prehistoric spider, took a trip to Barcelona - not the Earth Barcelona, by the way - the planet Barcelona, and... I saw her.’

Dorian stopped abruptly. ‘You saw Rose?’

The Doctor nodded, still walking. Dorian caught up with him.

‘How?’

‘I found a pocket of the universe that was about to close up and used it to send an image of myself to her universe.’ The Doctor looked miles away, light years away was probably a more accurate term.

‘And?’

‘She’s fine,’ the Doctor smiled weakly. ‘Brilliant, in fact.’ They exited the hospital. Dorian spotted Martha and Tish beside one of the ambulances and decided to go over and talk to Martha.

‘See you, Doctor.’ he waved.

Martha was talking to Tish when Dorian approached them. She looked up and seemed surprised to see him.

‘Hey,’ he said, rather awkwardly. Martha just stared at him for another moment before replying.

‘Hey.’ Her voice was rough, though that was to be expected after being starved of oxygen.

‘I, uh, I just wanted to check how you were doing,’ he explained. Tish was staring pointedly at him.

‘I’ll be alright,’ Martha said, giving him a small smile.

‘Good! Excellent, actually.’ He didn’t quite know what else to say. ‘Well, um, now that I’ve done that, I’ll go back, uh, over there.’ He gestured somewhere behind him. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye,’ Martha replied. Dorian walked quickly away, heading back to the UNIT jeeps where everything was being packed up.

‘There you are Smith,’ Mace barked, ‘We’re done here and going back to base. Grab some equipment and get in a jeep.’

Dorian obeyed with a ‘yes sir!’ and picked up a few aerials and straggling wires before climbing into one of the jeeps and being driven back to UNIT HQ in the Tower of London.

 


End file.
